I am so glad that you have raised these issues regarding Twitter as I find the whole Twitter concept to be a bit vague. I guess the one-liner sound bites peak the curiosity and incent people to learn more. Certainly your posts on new PEW reports have me racing to the PEW website to download the reports for my research. It is interesting to speculate what shape Twitter will take at the next level and how people will view this online resource over the long term.

http://apps.new.facebook.com/virtualcoaches/

http://www.sugarstats.com/tag/twitter-diabetes/

http://apps.facebook.com/whatsherdeal/ (this is an amazing quite extreme example)

Best regards,

Luis

Carol, thanks for the reminder to look at the glass 90% empty! Another reminder: 75% of adults in the U.S. go online; 25% do not. On my to-do list: update Pew Internet’s “access thermometers” with our latest data on internet, home broadband, and cell phones.

On one hand I think we need to remember how many folks are not receiving wildfire alerts, getting Comcast advice or following Lance’s comeback in this manner.

On the other hand, of the 11% that use these “services”, I am extremely eager to learn more about how they are being utilized by patients, parents, caregivers. What are the lessons learned with respect to healthcare and micro-blogging? Who are we reaching and who are we excluding? How can we better educate and empower individuals via this technology? I look forward to future reports and discussion.

btw, did you precede the question by asking “Do you know what Twitter is?” (Serious question. I’d be shocked if 11% of the general public knows.)

Mark: Thanks for being on the case, both here and on Twitter. I wrote to you that “feedback is a sign of relevance” and I mean it.

The Pew Internet Project is going into our 10th year of polling about the social impact of the internet. We are always looking for new ideas, new sources, and new ways to improve our research. It is thrilling to be able to get immediate comments and questions when we release a report – and not just from reporters, which is how we did things for many years. It’s people like you, who really have the knowledge of a field (and the knives out), who make our work better.

I like your idea of unpacking all the different services in a follow-up survey. But is it possible that “tweeted” has become the “xeroxed” of 2009?

I like your report, but, I think people may interpret the results incorrectly. For example, your use of “or another service” suggests a bigger picture which would include services such as Facebook, Jaiku, MySpace etc. but people are interpreting it as if it is SOLELY about Twitter. Like if I asked:

“Do you ever ride the bus or any other method of transport to get to work?”

If you got results of 90% you could sensibly conclude that 90% of people ride the bus or walk, taxi, car, cycle etc. to work. However, with your Twitter question people are interpreting it as “11% of online Internet adults use Twitter”. Maybe that’s just me?

If you’d have mentioned in your question that “other services” included Facebook et al. would you have received a higher figure I wonder? After all, “other services” comprises of the majority of traffic in comparison to Twitter. I guess I’d have believed you if I’d have had the breakdown saying something like:

5% use Facebook
3% use MySpace
2% use other services (Jaiku, Yammer etc.)
1% use Twitter

What do you think?

Thanks for the post & the report. Both are much needed.

Besides what you just posted we need a more descriptive post about the specific uses of twitter for medecine and for e-patients/e-health. There is much to write about! I hope to find the time to do it sometimes next week.

This could be a real eye-opener for quite a few people, since twitter is a simple communication protocol that facilitates instant delivery of well thought out information to many. From instant medical news to real-time description, from the OR, of a robot-driven cancer surgery, not forgetting advocacy and calls to support or refuse legislation of significance to patients, the realm of current uses is quite amazing.

Do you ever use the internet to use Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?

In our December 2008 survey, which is what is being reported, 11% of internet users said “yes.” We had tested this question in our November 2008 survey, when 9% said yes – that is within the margin of error of 3% so we can’t say the December result represents “growth.”

Our first question, fielded in May 2008, was worded slightly differently:

Do you ever use the internet to use Twitter or other micro-blogging service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?

We decided that “micro-blogging” was not a phrase in general usage and therefore cut it from the next survey.

One of our challenges is to construct survey questions that capture a phenomenon in just a few words and hopefully not completely associated with a certain brand name since we want to be able to re-visit the activity over a period of years. Yet we also want to get out in the field as quickly as possible so as to not miss the moment!

We hope that everyone not only gives us the benefit of the doubt but also contributes to improving our research! We strive to be an open-source research organization.